I spent this past weekend trying to live a little more like a local and do more “local” type activities in the Wellington region. With the time saved on not having travel days it was a packed in weekend spent frolicking through the Hutt Valley and in the lands on both far sides of the hills. My weekend took a somewhat West to East agenda.
Starting in the west on Friday Josh and I took a man trip over to Porirua for the high flying Adrenaline Forest, a 7 level high ropes course with zip lines and challenges amongst the trees. It was a very intricately constructed course but one that did not invoke much “adrenaline” for me. Instead, it was an exhausting trip across rope bridges and wires that still has me sore a couple days later. That night I got to meet, well sort of meet, the only professional athlete with my surname Tait. Lindsay Tait is an all-star point guard for the Wellington Saints and the Tall Blacks national team. I did not really talk to him, but hopefully he heard my yelling from the sidelines as he led his team to a big victory.
Saturday brought a fun morning out with my host family watching the little kids play soccer, hitting up a farmers market and eating food truck Chinese food. Tyron, the 11 year old had a game down in Miramar, or “Wellywood,” the film capital of New Zealand where Peter Jackson runs or has a stake in every company. It was a nice little town and I saw the exterior of a couple of studios like Park Road Post Production. After a pleasant run through the Hutt Valley on Saturday afternoon, Anton, my host dad, took a few of us and the kids to a Wellington Hurricanes rugby game. Not only did we see a fight, but we also a big win secured only in the last few minutes. After the game, I got to act like a wee little lad and ask the famous athletes for some autographs. The picture below is with one of the best players in the world Dane Coles (he was also one of the key stakeholders in the brawl).
Sunday was spent cycling through the east coast wineries of Martinborough in the Wairapa region. The scenery was beautiful, the wine was more expensive than I’ll ever be able to buy consistently on a collegiate income, and the biking was gentle. Fortunately, for just $5 you could sample 5 or 6 different types of the wines generated at the various wineries. I feel like I’m improving my palate, or at least my basic knowledge of the various types of wines. Martinborough is famous for its Pinot Noirs and New Zealand as a whole is famous for Sauvignon Blanc. My personal favorite tasting was a dessert wine from Muirlea Rise Vineyard. Quite savory and quite sweet and very appealing. Finally, the weekend was capped off with a Sunday night family dinner with much of the Curtis’ extended family. Everyone was very friendly, and appropriately inquisitive about the Americans living with their family. Having 10 kids running around also made for quite the atmosphere.
It’s hard to believe there’s only 2 weeks left in my stay in New Zealand! Stay tuned for another update in the middle of the week!
Reflections of an Urbanist 